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The Holland|Dutch painter Jan Nieuwenhuys is one
of the early active founders of the Dutch
Experimentalists group (Reflex) that later became
part of COBRA (avant-garde movement)|CoBrA. 

Jan lived and worked his whole life in Amsterdam
from 1922 until his death in 1986.

Around the age of 14 he and his two year older
brother decided to become painters. From 1938 to
1941 he attended the 'Rijksnormaalschool' in
Amsterdam. Later in the Second World War he also
took lessons at the 'Rijksacademie' in Amsterdam.
At the Rijksacademie he met Karel Appel and
Corneille.

In the Second World War Jan painted almost only
clowns, nudes and couples making love. Just after
the war he started painting fantasy animals like
aggressive cocks, cats and bulls. He and his
brother Constant Nieuwenhuis|Constant had many
arguments about his paintings. During the war
Constant himself painted only Catholic scenes like
pietas|piëtas and Maria portraits or still lifes
and thought that Jan chose his subjects too
lightly.



In 1948 Karel Appel|Appel, Jan Elburg|Elburg,
Gerrit Kouwenaar|Kouwenaar, Theo
Wolvenkamp|Wolvekamp, Corneille, Constant
Nieuwenhuys|Constant, Eugene Brands|Brands, Anton
Rooskens|Rooskens and Jan Nieuwenhuijs founded the
Experimentele Groep Holland that a few months
later became the European group CoBrA. Jan was in
his paintings of this period influenced by dreams,
children's drawings, the artistic expressions of
mentally handicapped people and primitive art.
Animals such as birds and cats play a leading role
in most of his works, along with fantastic
creatures and beings that are made up of a
combination of human, animal and mechanical
elements. A lot of the creatures balance on a rope
or wear boats as a hat.

Jan was soon disappointed in the members of the
CoBrA group, some of them were more interested in
fame than being an activist. He could not stand
the fighting that was going on between the members
and so he left the group in the middle of 1949.
Some other members also left, but they later
rejoined for the great exhibition in the Stedelijk
Museum.

In 1964 he said in an interview: "The group was
not founded as an exposition group but as a group
of activists. We wanted to put an effort into
that, to fight against the softness in art at the
time and using our imagination to change that.
Regrettably I must ascertain that many of the
Experimentalists of that day also became
esthetics. Everything official stops to be
combatant. I think that work of some of them look
very dormant these days".

Jan went his own way, disillusioned, and
concentrated only on his work. His paintings
became more and more liberated and he experimented
with different materials like fluorescent paint
and everything he could get his hands on.
Everything could become a painting.



In an interview from 1964 he says: "I start with
my material and my color. With that I express
myself. From the material I come to my subject and
that is maybe contrary to what painters did in
earlier days. I paint the way I write, the way I
laugh. That is why I paint differently all the
time, because my moods change. That’s the way I
feel."

"As a painter I don’t want to paint a particular
situation. I am not abstract, not really
non-figurative. I try to be expressive and
therefore I need certain images. Today I am in
China, tomorrow in Paris, after tomorrow some
other place. We are confronted every day with what
happens in the world. You’re living on a
specific spot, but also in the whole world. It’s
maybe therefore that we become so ignorant and
hard, because we experience too much. Hunger, war.
That particular situation doesn’t mean anything
anymore."

From the same interview: "I wish, if they see my
work later on, that they can see the twentieth
century. The artist must give his time a suit. And
it doesn’t matter if he is an architect, poet or
painter. In abstract painting I miss the beat of
this time, the rudeness. We, the people of today
we are living with the fear of an atom bomb. The
abstracts are building only a superficial world
for you.

==External links==
http://www.jannieuwenhuijs.com The Jan
Nieuwenhuijs Foundation

nl:Jan Nieuwenhuys